Free Web NovelChapter 113: Chapter 113 My Superwoman
_Alaric’s POV_
The hotel was one of mine.
Not a large one. Just a clean, well-run property on the quieter side of the city, the kind of place where guests were left alone and the staff understood that being useful and being intrusive were different things. I had used it a few times for regional travel and it had never disappointed me.
I had put Rowena in the room two floors above mine.
I told myself that was a practical decision. She needed privacy and the upper rooms had better views and more quiet. Both of those things were true. Whether they were the actual reason was a separate question I wasn’t going to examine too closely tonight.
I sat at the desk in my room and opened the files Reid had sent through before we landed. The investigation into what had happened to Rowena’s father and brothers had been running quietly through channels I trusted for weeks. The documents were organized and dense and I went through them methodically, marking things that required follow-up and flagging inconsistencies that needed explanation.
There were more inconsistencies than the official record acknowledged.
That was not surprising. Official records of events like that one tended to reflect what people had decided to put in them, not necessarily what had happened. The difference between those two things was where the truth usually lived.
I worked through it until my eyes told me they were done for the night.
I closed the files.
I got up and went to shower and stood under the water for longer than necessary because it had been a full day and the weight of it had settled into my shoulders in the manner that full days did.
I thought about her standing in that open space with her eyes closed.
I had watched her from a distance and I had not moved and I had not said anything because those were the right choices and I had made them. But watching her stand there in the place where she had lost the most important people in her life and hold herself together with that quiet composure that never left her, even there, even in that moment, had done something to me that I was still processing.
I had wanted to stand beside her.
Not behind her. Beside her. As an equal presence in the weight of the moment rather than someone waiting respectfully at a distance.
I had stayed where I was because it wasn’t my moment to stand in. But I had wanted to.
I came out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist and went to the terrace.
The city was quiet at this hour. Smaller than home, slower, the kind of city where nights were genuinely dark rather than just less bright. The air was cooler than the capital and it hit my skin cleanly and I stood at the railing with the water still on my shoulders and looked out at the dark, letting my mind go where it wanted.
It went to her.
It went to the moment on the tarmac when she had stepped up into the plane and said something over her shoulder to me and laughed quietly at her own comment and I had stood there watching her and thought, with complete clarity, that I was in serious trouble.
Then later, at the site, when she had stepped back toward me and leaned into my chest and I had put my arms around her and she had let me, just for a moment, just long enough to feel like something real.
I leaned on the railing and looked at the dark city and smiled without meaning to.
I had made a private decision sometime in the last few months, I wasn’t sure exactly when, that I was not going to let her be broken again. Not by Kaelen, not by Alice’s leftovers, not by whatever was still unresolved about her father’s death, not by anything I could stand between her and. She had spent years holding things together for people who hadn’t deserved it and I was not going to be another person who took that from her without giving anything back.
I loved her.
I had known it for a while and I had been careful about how I moved with it because being the Alpha King and feeling what I felt put a specific kind of pressure on a situation that I was determined not to weaponize. She needed to arrive at whatever she felt on her own terms. I would be patient.
I was good at patient when it mattered.
My phone buzzed on the table inside.
Reid.
I went back in and picked it up.
“Sorry for the hour,” Reid said.
“It’s fine. What is it?”
“An email came through to the regional office this afternoon,” he said. “From Kaelen Varkos. He’s requesting assistance.” A brief pause. “He’s being sued for trademark infringement. His club’s operating accounts are frozen and he can’t reach his operations manager.” Another pause. “He’s asking the Alpha King’s office to intervene.”
I stood in the middle of my hotel room with water still drying on my chest and thought about Kaelen throwing a cheque at Rowena last night and calling her shameless in his own club in front of fifty people.
I laughed.
It came out short and genuine and I didn’t try to stop it.
“Alpha?” Reid called out confused, probably wondering if I’d finally lost it.
“Decline,” I said.
“Decline the request entirely?” ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
“Entirely,” I said. “Send a standard response. The office is unable to intervene in private commercial disputes at this time.” I paused. “Word it correctly.”
“Of course,” Reid said. “Anything else?”
“No. Get some sleep.”
I hung up.
I set the phone down and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
Then I went back to the terrace and stood in the cool night air and thought about Rowena two floors above me probably still awake, probably reviewing notes or going through documents, probably doing three things at once even at this hour.
She was strong. The strongest woman after my mother that I’d met in my life.
My superwoman.
